Law and Lawlessness: Government Response to Riots in Southern Cities during the Civil War Erik Lorenz HIST-497: Research Methods in History October 29, 2020 1 Introduction “There are lamp posts and rope enough to cure this worse than treason—and the remedy will be supplied by an outraged people.”1 This ominous observation was made in a poster which some disgruntled citizen posted in a public place in Mobile, Alabama before May 9th, 1863. The sentiment described could have been articulated by upset citizens in many urban centers during the Civil War. In the wartime South, cities were often the scene of violent crowd passions. From outrage over food prices to violent political passions, moments of lawlessness swept through cities, raising questions over the role government played in leading to those riots and how they dealt with such moments of lawlessness. Historians of riots in southern cities during the Civil War have focused on bread riots in particular and their characteristics, causes and gendered elements. Andrew Smith’s Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War predictably argues that hunger was the deciding factor in the Civil War.2 Smith covers Northern and Southern agricultural production before the war, the impact of the Confederate cotton embargo, the reasons the Confederacy failed to grow more food over the course of the war, and touches on the Confederate government response to food scarcity. In his chapter on the Confederate bread riots, Smith gives a broad overview of their characteristics, causes and gendered elements. He recounts the events of various riots while largely focusing on the Richmond riot. He covers how several governmental policies contributed to the riots, and touches on how local, state and federal officials responded to riots as they happened and afterward, and finally argues that though rioting women won several concessions, the larger governmental response was a failure. 1 “The Volcano Smoking in Mobile,” Prairie Farmer: Devoted to Western Agriculture, Mechanics & Education 11, no. 19 (May 9, 1863): 299. 2 Andrew F. Smith, Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War (1st ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011). 2 William Warren Rogers’ Confederate Home Front: Montgomery During the Civil War is a microhistory providing valuable examples of food scarcity and its impact on poor women, the demands placed on local government, and solutions implemented by the local government that created riotous conditions.3 Teresa Crisp Williams’ and David Williams’ “‘The Women Rising’: Cotton, Class, and Confederate Georgia's Rioting Women” examines the deteriorating conditions that led to the bread riots and argues that the riots happened because lower-class women were not protected by Southern men, specifically by planters that grew too much cotton and not enough food, leading to speculation, outrage and riot.4 Eugene M. Lerner’s “Money, Prices, and Wages in the Confederacy, 1861-65” illuminates the problem of inflation and the ineffective measures taken by the Confederate government to control it, arguing that the money supply increased as the real output of the Confederate economy decreased, leading to popular outrage.5 Because most of the rioters were women, much of the historiography of riots focuses on how gender shaped them. One notable center of historiography examines the injustice women felt at being subjected to conditions of rising prices, speculation, and governmental neglect. In Scarlett Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Laura Edwards examines the lives and contributions of Southern black and white women in the 19th century, using the framework of several women’s writings.6 Edwards focuses on the household as the center of Southern society and draws on primary sources to explore the actions and experiences of Southern women in their social context. Edwards claims that poor white women in Confederate cities during the war rioted because of 3 William Warren Rogers, Confederate Home Front: Montgomery During the Civil War (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2014). 4 Teresa Crisp Williams and David Williams, “‘The Women Rising’: Cotton, Class, and Confederate Georgia’s Rioting Women,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 86, no. 1 (2002): 49–83. JSTOR 40584640 5 Eugene M. Lerner, “Money, Prices, and Wages in the Confederacy, 1861-1865,” Journal of Political Economy (1955): 20–40. JSTOR 1826773 6 Laura F. Edwards, Scarlett Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Southern Women in the Civil War Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000). 3 the lack of accessible food, and because of the injustice of being left to starve while the army and the rich were well-fed. She notes the frequency of these riots during the war, and that mobs sometimes targeted government officials and stores. Drew Gilpin Faust’s The creation of Confederate nationalism: ideology and identity in the Civil War South examines the creation of public identity during the war and argues that Evangelicalism and Republicanism proved a weak, conflicting basis for nationalism.7 She shows that the elite became more dependent on the lower classes to maintain the war effort, giving them greater bargaining power. Faust argues that women rioted out of a belief that speculative prices were illegal and out of the desire to be able to buy necessities at prewar prices. Michael B. Chesson’s “Harlots or Heroines? A New Look at the Richmond Bread Riot” is an in-depth examination of the riot seeking to correct historiographical errors and resolve as best as possible the conflicting evidence about the riot.8 Chesson asks about the causes of the riot, the actors in it, how it was suppressed, whether news of it spread, and why it was not repeated. After closely examining the role specific women and women in general played in the riots, Chesson concludes that rioting women were “neither harlots nor heroines, but simply individual human beings whose lives had been blighted by war.”9 Another center of women’s historiography looks at the violation of gender roles. Faust’s Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War examines how the upheaval of the Civil War required elite women to re-invent themselves, and argues that the destruction of the social order dissuaded attempts to challenge the patriarchy.10 It gives a 7 Drew Gilpin Faust, The creation of Confederate nationalism: ideology and identity in the Civil War South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988). 8 Michael B. Chesson, "Harlots or Heroines? A New Look at the Richmond Bread Riot," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 92, no. 2 (1984): 131–175. 9 Chesson, 174. 10 Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 245. 4 women’s history interpretation of the bread riots, using class analysis to compare the riots to upper-class revelry and assert that both were responses to violations of paternalistic social norms and statements of female assertiveness, as well as explicitly rejecting sacrifice ideology. Katherine Titus’ “The Richmond Bread Riot of 1863: Class, Race, and Gender in the Urban Confederacy” argues that Confederate legislative and treasury policies amplified resentment and prompted the breaking of gender roles and traditional social norms.11 A third center of women’s historiography considers what effect the gendered nature of riots had on how the government moved to eliminate riots and the conditions leading to them. In Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Confederate South, Stephanie McCurry argues that the Confederacy was defeated from the inside, by the ignored—by women and slaves.12 She argues that women practiced a “politics of subsistence” and that there was a “massive slave rebellion.”13 McCurry devotes a chapter to the bread riots, arguing that direct action of poor white women forced the Confederate government to improve their welfare strategy. In Confederate Cities: The Urban South During the Civil War Era, Keith S. Bohannon writes an essay entitled “‘More like Amazons than starving people’: Women’s Urban Riots in Georgia in 1863”. 14 Bohannon also argues that Georgia women rioted out of necessity and encouraged government to provide relief, but in contrast to McCurry’s claim, Bohannon insists the Georgia government acted to provide relief before the riots. 11 Katherine R. Titus, "The Richmond Bread Riot of 1863: Class, Race, and Gender in the Urban Confederacy," The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 6 (2011): 86–146. 12 Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2012). 13 McCurry, 259. 14 Keith Bohannon, “‘More like Amazons than starving people’: Women’s Urban Riots in Georgia in 1863,” in Confederate Cities: The Urban South During the Civil War Era, ed. David Goldfield and Andrew L. Slap (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 147-162. 5 The present study treats the role of government in creating conditions for rioting and examines what actions government took in responding to riots as they happened and afterwards. It asks, how was government responsible for these riots? How did government respond to these riots, and why? Finally, this study sees a gap in scholarship on riots in southern cities that were held by the Union during the Civil War. Causes of the Riots While the Union’s sea blockade of the Confederacy grew increasingly more effective as the war dragged on, it was the Confederate government’s food policies that played the major role in sparking bread riots throughout the South.15 The food supply began to be strained as the Confederate government instituted a 10% tax on all produce, but in a city like Richmond, for example, there was plenty of food.16 Richmond was not under siege; food existed at government warehouses and stores, but it was simply too expensive.